Universal Grammar

Lecture 5

1. Universal Grammar as a linguistic theory

2. Universal Grammar of N. Chomsky

Universal grammar (UG) is a theory in linguistics that suggests that there are properties that all possible natural human languages have. It is a theory of linguistics that postulates principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans (linguistic nativism). It attempts to explain language acquisition in general, not describe specific languages. Universal grammar proposes a set of rules intended to explain language acquisition in child development.

Universal grammar is an innatist view that all people are born with some knowledge of language. Linguists use this hypothesis to explain how we can acquire a language with not enough input to account for the complexity of output. Essentially, we are all born with the capacity for any kind of language. This is not to say we are born with knowledge of the particular rules of our own language, but rather general or universal principles of all languages. This innate knowledge allows us to select a particular language based on a few instances of input and produce very complex output that we he have never encountered as input. One example of a kind of principle proposed by UG theorists is the innate parameter. We are born with parameters of language and minimal instances of input. This will allow us to figure out how to set the parameters for our own language. It is a subconscious process. Evidence for this is found in the head-first or head-last parameter of language, which has been uncovered: In English, phrases are head-first: that means that a noun is at the head of a noun phrase, a preposition is at the head of a prepositional phrase, and verb is at the head of a verb phrase. Our innate parameter is such that if one of these phrases is head-first, they all will be. And hence a few utterances whereby a child understands that a preposition heads a prepositional phrase will allow the child to correctly construct other phrases too. In Korean and Japanese, prepositional phrases are head-last and accordingly, so are the other phrases. This will resonate well with any English speaker who has studied Japanese or Korean and discovered that everything seems to be backwards. The Innatists claim that this is an example of the parameter having been set differently.

The concept of UG has been traced to the observation of Roger Bacon, who was a 13th-century Franciscan friar and philosopher. He considered that all languages are built upon a common grammar, substantially the same in all languages. This grammar may undergo accidental variations. The 13^th c. speculative grammarians who, followed R. Bacon, postulated universal rules underlying all grammars. The concept of a universal grammar or language was at the core of the 17^th c. projects for philosophical languages. The 18^th century in Scotland saw the emergence of a vigorous universal grammar school. In the 19^th c. Charles Darwin described language as an instinct in humans, like the upright posture. The expression was popularized in the 1950s and 1960s by Noam Chomsky and other linguists.

During the first half of the 20^th. c. linguists theorized about the human ability to speak. They did so from the behaviourist perspective that prevailed at that time. They therefore held that language learning, like any other kind of learning, could be explained by a succession of trials, errors, and rewards for success. In other words, children learned their mother tongue by simple imitation, listening to and repeating what adults said.

This view became radically questioned, by the American linguist N. Chomsky. For he acquired that language cannot be reduced to simply developing an inventory of responses to stimuli, because every sentence that anyone produces can be a totally new combination of words. When we speak, we combine a finite number of elements (the words of our language) to create an infinite number of larger structures (sentences).

Even before the age of 5, children can consistently produce and interpret sentences that they have never encountered before. They do not have any formal instruction for it. This extraordinary ability to use language despite having had only very partial exposure to the allowable syntactic variants led N. Chomsky to his “poverty of the stimulus” argument, which was the foundation for the new approach that he proposed in the early 1960s.

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